When most think of esports, they think of young boys/men who sit and play games like League of Legends or CounterStrike without interaction with the outside world. But according to an Entertainment Software Association report from 2016, 41 percent of gamers are female and in a separate report from SuperData, although 65 percent of players and participants in the most popular esports titles are men. The esports landscape has always been male-centric, but a college in America’s heartland is trying to change that.
Stephens College, an all-women’s college in Missouri, is becoming the first all-women's college to sponsor a varsity Overwatch esports program. According to ESPN, the team will compete in the Tespa Collegiate Series when the program begins in the fall of 2017.
"We always consider ourselves early adopters, or a kayak in the water, as I would say, rather than an ocean liner," said Stephens College president Dianne Lynch. "We have the capacity and the appetite for doing something new that allows us to say, 'Let's try this.' Let's see if we can provide an environment where women have an opportunity to, in some ways, break barriers."
There are many colleges that are starting their own esports teams and offering scholarships for students in the program. Schools like the University of Utah and others are blazing a trail for College esports, with Utah being the first major university to establish a League of Legends varsity team. Stephens College is a part of the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), which has 31 schools under its umbrella. And even though all the schools in the NACE are co-ed, most teams are predominantly men.
"Our hope is that we will be able to create a culture on campus where the only people in the room who are gaming are women, so you have this dynamic that eliminates that other, sort of negative culture out of their immediate space," Lynch said, "and that there will come, over time, the same kind of expectations of sportsmanship and appropriate behavior and civility and courtesy in the college gaming space that we expect in all of the rest of our athletics programs.
"That, as it grows over time, will have an impact on the culture and the level of tolerance for incivility and sexism in the universe of gamers."
For more information on the new program from Stephens College, check out their website by clicking here.
